Clublife

An online journal of the nightly (and daily) nonsense endured by a (former) bouncer at two of New York's most popular nightclubs.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Enough

Yes, Tiki Barber looks and sounds horrible on television, and yes, he’s handled his retirement and post-football career rather gracelessly, but we shouldn’t, in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl XLII, take this as our cue to revise history.

I’ve been a New York Giants fan since the coaching days of Ray Perkins – this dates back to the very early eighties if you don’t know, which you probably don’t – and Barber’s definitely on my short list of Best Giants Ever. Others on this list, in no particular order, include Lawrence Taylor, Harry Carson, Mark Bavaro, Phil Simms and Carl Banks. I don’t particularly admire Michael Strahan as a human being – I’ve heard some shit – but the guy’s been double teamed on virtually every play from scrimmage for the past fifteen years, which has to count for something.

In Barber’s case, I think what all these people who’ve suddenly become Giants fans since last week are failing to realize – since most of them hadn’t seen a Giants game since the last time they played in the Super Bowl (2000) – is that he literally carried the team on his back for seven seasons. For my money, the guy was the best player in the league for three years running, from 2004-06. There wasn’t anyone else in the NFL like him. Nobody.

Totaling over 2,000 all-purpose yards for three straight years – combined rushing and receiving – tends to make a very valid claim for this, and after watching every game Barber played for his entire career, I can say, with authority, that there wasn’t another player in the league who assumed such a substantial chunk of his team’s offensive load. If you watched enough games, you eventually came to realize that he touched the ball on just about every fucking play.

To say the Giants are in the Super Bowl because Barber is gone is ridiculous. To claim they’re better off without him on the team is asinine. And as a lifelong Giants fan, we sure as hell could use him a week from Sunday.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

I'm in this video...

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

New Project

I haven’t been posting much lately because I’ve started a new project that’s been taking up shitloads of my time. I suppose I’ve “officially” commenced said project this week, but in reality, I’ve spent the last two months spending inordinate amounts of time with my protagonist trying to decide whether he’s actually worth writing about.

He is. You’ll like him, and you’ll like what he’s doing and you’ll want him to do it. Whether he will or not is another story altogether, but that’s the fun of it. I don’t know, and neither does he, but fuck it, right? If he does end up doing what we’ll all want him to do, and I don’t document this shit for posterity, it’ll be a crying fucking shame.

I’m not going into particulars so soon in this process because the world is filled with scumbags and assorted pieces of shit, and since this is an idea that hasn’t been done successfully yet, I’m certain some asshole would read this and steal the concept if I go into any detail. Then again, the fact that I gained access to it at all was a total stroke of blind luck which I doubt could be replicated by anyone for whom the planets and stars aren’t aligned quite as perfectly as they were for me the day my protagonist dialed my number.

Suffice it to say that this will be a work of non-fiction where I, believe it or not, am only a peripheral character in the story. Actually, I’m more than just peripheral – I’m a pretty major part of what’s been going on so far - but I’m still debating what role I’ll give myself in the final narrative because I’m not the one who has so very much to lose or gain here.

In any event, this documentation has become a daily thing with me, and I’m well into the process of collecting material. When all is said and done, we’ll hopefully end up with my second book – an “insider’s” look at something very few people have ever seen in person, and about which still fewer know a damned thing about.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

No Box

I wish I’d invented the move of pulling the fat guy’s shirt off in the middle of the fight, but I didn’t. There aren’t many things I want to take credit for in life that other people have done - primarily because I don’t like most of the things that people do - but pulling the fat guy’s shirt off is a stroke of brilliance I wish I’d come up with myself.

See, there was a fight, and there was an out of control fat guy who had scored himself the club-fighter’s hat-trick, nailing that transcendent triad of starting it, exacerbating it and prolonging it beyond the point of utility. This was a cry for help. Out of control fat guys cry for help at bars and clubs because they want someone to hear them. When they’ve been in a fight, and things move outside, they have their soapbox and they’ll use code words, veiled in bluster and threat, to tell you everything in fat-guy-land isn’t as fine and dandy as they tried to make it seem when they first came to the door, license in hand.

There’s nothing worse than watching a grown man lose control of himself, unless you’re talking about a horrifically out of shape grown man, which is a special case. It’s a special case because they’re prematurely limited, physically speaking, and angry about things many of us will never quite understand until we get much older. They need to let the rest of us know they’re alive – that they, too, have feelings, hurts and sensibilities – and so they cry out in the only way they can for the benefit of the only audience they’re able to hold captive.

I have feelings, hurts and sensibilities too, though – ones I’ve earned the hard way through working for a living and not having the time nor the energy to sit and listen to some undisciplined piece of shit screaming his head off because somebody “disrespected” him enough to steal his fucking cocktail frank.

Or whatever.

So what you do, when an out of control fat guy starts doing his thing, is you pull his shirt off and throw it as far as you can. By the time you’ve arrived at the point of pulling an out of control fat guy’s shirt off and throwing it, you’ll be able to throw it pretty damned far because you’ll be pretty fucking angry at him, and short of killing him, pulling off his shirt and throwing it down the sidewalk – or into the crowd – is probably the worst possible thing you can do to an out of control fat guy.

I saw this happen last weekend. I saw a good, decent man snatch the shirt from an out of control fat guy in mid-cry-for-help, and it was probably the single best bouncing maneuver I’ve ever had the good fortune to witness. When an out of control fat guy loses his shirt, and he’s down to the for-all-to-see root problem, right there in front of the crowd, a definite paradigm shift takes place and it’s a beautiful thing to see. It’s like you’ve shot the bastard with a tranquilizer dart.

This particular patient stopped dead. He lost his focus. The only thing that mattered anymore was getting his shirt back and getting himself covered. That was it. He was made to live in the moment. He hadn’t been doing that, which, theoretically was his entire problem. We gave him a goal. We granted him the gift of urgency, and he accepted it full bore, barreling down the sidewalk in pursuit of his size XXXXL security blanket.

I was too fixated on the fact that I’d learned something new to laugh.

Some of you may think this approach is cruel, but look at both sides of the issue. When someone dumps their problems on your doorstep – putting your health at risk in the bargain – the only move you can make is to put both hands on your broom and sweep them away as best you can.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Elite

My bouncing life has always been a bit dichotomous.

One side of my mouth is always spouting the company line about how I’m one of the guys, and how bouncing, like most other jobs, is comprised mainly of good men – and, on occasion, women - looking for a second income because living in New York can be too expensive for those of us born without advantages. The side of my mouth that says these things insists I’m no better than any of the rest of the people with whom I work – that we’re all in the same boat and that the circumstances that landed us here haven’t necessarily conspired to make us any worse, as people, than anyone else in the world.

The other side of my mouth marks me as a hypocrite. That side of my mouth – I mostly stay quiet on this point, for obvious reasons – wonders, occasionally aloud, how the fuck I, of all people, ended up doing this shitbag job. Mind you, I’m not talking in terms of we here. This is about me, and how I tacitly consider myself to be somewhat better than the people around me. Whether it’s right or wrong to look at the world this way, this is what I think, and this is how I am.

I can see why he ended up as a bouncer, but me? Why me?

I think about this hypocritical side of my mouth when I start making value judgments, because I know I’m excessively judgmental at times and I don’t like feeling guilty about it. “Thinkin’ who da fuck I am” is part of my makeup, and I’ll not be apologizing for it anytime soon. If I see something that doesn’t exactly jibe with my value system, I’d be remiss in not pointing out its faults because an omission of this sort would go against my nature as a human being. I can’t not say – or write - something. This has gotten me in trouble in the past, but the consequences of silence – frustration and emasculation – are exponentially worse.

These concepts came into my head last night while I was working the door. It may surprise some of you, but I’ve always instinctively looked for the good in people when first meeting them. This, seemingly, is a good way to live – provided you keep your guard high enough to prevent yourself from being taken advantage of – but I’ve occasionally fallen into the trap of accepting a pleasing aesthetic as a measure of overall quality, i.e., if she’s that hot, she must be a good person.

Thing is, I’m tired of all of it now. I’m sick of giving some asshole the benefit of the doubt because he’s from my old neighborhood or because he took time out from posturing to give me a nod as he strutted past. Those days are long gone. My old neighborhood is filled the its very brim with assholes, none of whom would give me the time of day anymore. People don’t look at me and say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover. That Rob’s a good guy despite how he looks and acts.” This doesn’t happen because I neither look nor act like an asshole. I don’t need for people to have to peel back layer upon layer of assholia to find my inner “good guy.”

So I'll no longer be doing any peeling, inside the club or out. I don't have any more time.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Roger Clemens

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

ByeSpace

I know you all will be tremendously disappointed, but I’m finally dumping my MySpace account once and for all.

I honestly never wanted a MySpace page in the first place. In fact, I didn’t even know what MySpace was until about two years ago – long past the point where everyone else was already up and running with the thing. I created the page for the sole purpose of promoting my book, which hasn’t worked out particularly well because I’ve never really used it properly for that.

In actuality, I haven’t used it for anything. If you’ve messaged me on MySpace, chances are I haven’t replied. In two years, I may have left a half dozen comments, and most of those were left on the same guy’s page. Ironically, the guy in question is a “real world” friend of mine who doesn’t use MySpace much either. I don’t write bulletins, I don’t share photos and I’m not a member of any groups. MySpace is not a part of my life.

Long story short, MySpace has outlived it’s utility, and it’s time to get rid of it and move in some other direction. What that other direction will be, I have no idea, but it won’t be something that’s already been co-opted and spoiled by fifteen year-olds, illiterates or page upon page of photographs of people who think they’re reinventing the wheel in the VIP room at the club.

Newsflash: It’s all been done before, and it’s been done much better than you’re currently doing it.

So, if you’re looking to get in touch with me for whatever reason, use the email address on this site. I should have said that a while ago, since I’ve rarely replied to MySpace messages, but there you go. Thanks for the memories.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Aces

I think I’m back.

Where have I been?

Same place I’ve always been, just not writing about much of it. I’m not talking about things much either, even to the point of completely blowing off some guy at a poker game the other night when he asked me about the book and about my “writing career.”

I told him I’d “retired.” Several people heard me say this and it confused them a great deal, but I couldn’t clarify my position because clarification would’ve entailed engaging the initial inquisitor in a conversation I didn’t want to have.

I haven’t retired, of course, because in order to retire, you need to have been employed in the first place, and I wouldn’t exactly label my scant literary experience – at this point, anyhow – as gainful employment. In any case, I’d been suffering from a miserable head cold all week and pretty much wanted to avoid, at all costs, talking about myself in front of strangers.

So yes, Jim – intrepid cousin of the great “Clint” - this post is directed at you.

Jim is not the gentleman I blew off. Jim is a very nice fellow whom I unintentionally misled as a result of my angry-about-to-snap-guy poker persona – a table image I’ve managed to develop through a complete and utter abhorrence of live poker ring games. I despise live – as opposed to internet – poker games because they’re hot, they’re cramped and people talk too fucking much – all things that conspire to make me want to flip the damned table over and start savagely beating people with chairs until we arrive at the silences I cherish so very much.

There are very few things, relatively speaking, worse than sitting in a folding chair for eight hours listening to a group of tipsy twenty and thirty-somethings blathering on about “string raises,” “gutshot straights” and “runner-runner flushes.” This is time life won’t give you back.

In any event, I’m not retiring. Far from it, in fact. I just figured I’d kick off a new round of consistent posting by expressing my hope that everyone’s 2008 is off to a happy, healthy beginning. Mine’s been fairly rewarding thus far, save for the alcoholic haze in which I spent the past few days.

The departure of “Clint” – back to his beloved Texas – will do wonders for my liver.